


in a field of buttercups

by WingedQuill



Series: the children of flowers and leaves [3]
Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: Child Abuse, Druid Geralt, Druid Jaskier, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Geralt and Jaskier are brothers, Hurt Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Hurt Jaskier | Dandelion, Hurt/Comfort, Mind Control, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Protective Siblings, Shapeshifter Jaskier | Dandelion, Sibling Bonding, Sibling Love, Siblings, Visenna is a baaaaaaaad mom in this y'all
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:07:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26169919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WingedQuill/pseuds/WingedQuill
Summary: Like all of Visenna's children, Buttercup feels his mother’s power crash over him as soon as he draws his first breath. It’s a warm and weighty thing, slipping around every bit of his unsparked brain and holding it tighter, tighter, tighter. He doesn’t know anything about the world yet, doesn’t even know hunger, or thirst, or exhaustion, basic animal needs. What he does know is this, immediately and irreparably—his mind is not his own.Unlike his younger brother, he is not strong enough to fight it.Unlike his youngest sister, he is not weak enough to be happy.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion, Jaskier | Dandelion & Visenna
Series: the children of flowers and leaves [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1811806
Comments: 13
Kudos: 131





	in a field of buttercups

**Author's Note:**

> So...one throwaway line about how Visenna names all her children after plants sparked ~this idea~ and now here we are, one Whole Ass AU later. I have. Many plans.
> 
> One of these plans is that this verse will be featured in the [Into the Jaskierverse](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1895545) fic collaboration, which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. My work won't be added until late October (which gives me plenty of time to finish at least this installment!) but you should definitely go check it out before then, there are some wonderful writers working on it!
> 
> CW for this chapter: child abuse in the form of mind control and pretty severe emotional abuse/neglect

Like all of his siblings, Buttercup feels his mother’s power crash over him as soon as he draws his first breath. It’s a warm and weighty thing, slipping around every bit of his unsparked brain and holding it tighter, tighter, tighter. He doesn’t know anything about the world yet, doesn’t even know hunger, or thirst, or exhaustion, basic animal needs. What he does know is this, immediately and irreparably—his mind is not his own.

Unlike his younger brother, he is not strong enough to fight it.

Unlike his youngest sister, he is not weak enough to be happy.

***

Visenna smiles down at the tiny, cooing baby nestled in a cradle of buttercups. She brushes her fingers over his cheek, smooths back a stray tuft of reddish hair. She always loves these moments, in the immediate aftermath of birth. Nine months of struggle coalesced into peace.

She can feel her son’s magic simmering beneath his skin, quick and bright and lively. She chose this birthplace well, she thinks. A fitting name for this child. Sunny, cheerful. But deadly, if left unchecked, untamed, unguarded. He’s a powerful little thing. 

She calms his panic at being alive, frantic and birdlike, a desperate confusion that all children face. His chaos rises to the surface, ready to thrash out, to defend him against a nonexistent threat. She quells it with a wave of peace, tucks it safely away in his racing heart. 

“None of that, little one,” she breathes, pressing her lips against his forehead. “None of that. I won’t let you be poisonous.”

***

There’s a pressure in Buttercup’s chest and throat, building and building and ready to burst from his lips. But he can’t let go of it, can’t let go of it, can’t—

A similar pressure behind his eyes, burning like the world against his skin, and he can’t let go of that, either.

***

Buttercup’s magic is a beautiful thing, most days. He only needs to be placed among the ferns to encourage them to grow. Mice and birds fall asleep curled in the crook of his elbow, calmed by his very presence. When he begins to crawl, the field behind Visenna’s house sprouts patches of wildflowers in the shapes of tiny handprints. And he’s constantly trying to crawl off into the forest, no doubt drawn by its call, as Visenna herself was when she was a babe.

But then, there are some days that the poison hangs thick on the back of Visenna’s tongue, where she can practically taste the danger in the air. When she knows that, if she let Buttercup have his way, the flowers would wither away in seconds.

On those days, she holds him in her arms, and sings to him, and blankets him in her own magic.

***

The first decision that Buttercup ever makes is that he needs to get away from Ma. He tries, whenever she lets him out of her sight, crawls for the forest as fast as his tiny limbs will carry him. Maybe if he just gets far enough away, her magic will fall away from his mind. But she always catches him, always scoops him up, bounces him in her arms, murmurs something that he doesn’t fully understand, not yet.

But her thoughts are in his head, pressing down over his own, and he gets the impression of dark woods and  _ danger. _

That danger doesn’t feel quite as dangerous as the danger here. So he tries again.

***

Visenna is a healer, and she knows that she shouldn’t be shocked at the rate that children grow. But it startles her, every time she does this. One minute she has a tiny baby in her arms, babbling away at nothing, and then she has a little human, following her on unsteady feet, carefully forming his disconnected syllables into words. And then sentences, questions, stories, putting words to all the thoughts in his little head.

Sometimes he frowns at her, and she can feel his magic struggling against her hold, butterfly wings batting against a glass jar far too strong to break.

“Why—?” he begins, before his pinched brow smooths out and his question dissipates into nothingness, his mouth hanging uselessly open as she calms him. It saddens her, that he still turns to poison rather than sunlight. But it’s only been six years. He will learn to be better, in time.

***

He wants to question her hold on his mind, just as he questions how the forest works, how the weather turns, how the animals live. But every time he tries, she just presses her will down over his, smothering his questions in wave upon wave of  _ warmth, calm, quiet.  _ He hates it. Hates it as much as he can hate anything, with the warmth dragging him down into placidity. 

He tries to whisper the questions to himself, at night, when she’s asleep.  _ Why are you doing this? Why are you hurting me?  _ But her magic keeps its hold on him, even then. Wiping away all signs of treachery until he is crushed beneath a wall of unnatural calm.

The pressure always gets bad then, especially behind his eyes. He wonders if that’s the chaos she always talks about, the kind he needs to keep under control. The kind that could destroy them both.

On the darkest, loneliest,  _ calmest  _ nights, he almost hopes it is.

***

By the time Buttercup is ten, Visenna thinks that she understands the shape and strength of his magic. It's quite like hers in many ways, just not nearly as powerful. Calming and soothing and encouraging growth. He’s more like her than any of her children have been, and that brings a smile to her lips, the satisfaction of a job well done. She loves all her children, but Buttercup might just be her favorite.

***

If he’s enough like her, will she let him go?

If he’s enough like her, if he calms his magic to match hers, will she let her guard down? Slip the warmth from his mind long enough for him to run?

He thinks it might be working. She’s growing less and less cautious around him. And then one day, they’re walking together in the woods, foraging for potion ingredients. And Buttercup sees the wolves.

They’re huge, hulking things but they play together like puppies, rolling in the dirt and nipping at each other’s paws. And Buttercup can’t quite say why, but he gets the strangest urge to join in. So he takes a step forward. Another. Not thinking about Ma, or the herbs, or her thoughts mixed with his. Only thinking that he wants to be like the wolves, playful and silly and  _ loved. _

Something shifts.

_ He  _ shifts.

He falls forward onto his hands, but they’re not hands, not anymore. He hits the ground on four paws and runs forward, yipping eagerly. The world is sharp and strong and wonderful around him, every sense clearer, every muscle stronger.

A wall of warmth and he skids to a stop, his legs giving out underneath him. He crashes to the ground with a whimper. The other wolves back up, snarling at Ma. 

“Go,” she tells them, lifting her chin. “Go. I won’t hurt you. Or him.”

_ Stay,  _ he wants to beg them.  _ Please stay, please help me. _

They go.

***

A shapeshifter.

Her Buttercup is a shapeshifter.

She paces back and forth, running her fingers through her hair. This must be it then. The poison she sensed lurking in his bones, the strange darkness that even now always wants to rise up against her. 

She thinks of the other mages she has met with this power. Wolves and bears, their muzzles streaked with gore. Sinew gripped between powerful talons, venom dripping from sharp fangs. Give a human the strength of an animal, and they’ll immediately use it to hurt other humans. She has seen it time and time again.

“Oh, darling,” she murmurs, kneeling by his side and stroking his muzzle. “It’s alright. I won’t let you hurt anyone.”

He huffs wearily. She nods.

“I know. I know it’s confusing. I know it’s scary. Magic always is.”

She scratches behind his ear. He closes his eyes.

“You can stay human,” she says. “I know you can.”

***

He tries to shift around her, a few more times. Picking small, harmless animals, cats and dogs and sparrows.  _ See? It’s not dangerous, it’s who I am, it’s  _ **_precious._ ** Every time she shakes her head, and his limbs go limp as the warmth washes over him.

“I know it’s hard to resist changing,” she tells him. “But you can, Buttercup. You must.”

And every time he stays in that warm haze until he changes back into a human, and every time he can feel her scrutiny of him growing more intense.

He stops trying, eventually. But it’s too late. She doesn’t trust him anymore.

***

Visenna doesn’t breathe freely until six months go by without any sign of shapeshifting. She checks Buttercup’s little corner of the cottage for signs of stray fur and feathers, but nothing. He’s managed to drain the poison from his petals, managed to mould himself into a harmless flower.

“I’m so proud of you,” she tells him, and she means it. She can see it now, him a healer, just like her. Soothing away ills, comforting and calming and making everything okay. 

He smiles, sweet and harmless.

“Thanks, Ma,” he says.

***

The pressure is almost constant, building and burning behind his eyes. It grows with the overwhelming urge to shift, to grow wings and take to the skies, to fall to four legs and sprint through the forest. To be  _ free,  _ truly and utterly free. 

His hands shake as he plucks herbs for his mother, his legs tremble as he dutifully follows her through the forest, he spends long nights just staring off into the dark, thinking over everything he would scream at her, if only he could.

She never asks him what’s wrong.

***

No matter how many children Visenna has, she’s never ready to let them go. But that’s true of any parent, isn’t it? It must be. In a blink, they go from a baby to an adult, and you wonder where you’ve been the whole time. Because surely you must have seen them growing up.

She gathers up a bag of coins, a small selection of herbs, a few changes of clothes. Blinks back her tears and straightens her spine.

“Happy birthday, Buttercup,” she says.

And this is always the hardest part. Letting go of a years-long hug, a lifetime of warmth. But well, Buttercup isn’t a child anymore. He doesn’t need her to hold his hand, to teach him the difference between right and wrong. He knows.

So she hugs his mind one last time, and then she lets it go.

***

And just like that, he’s free. Sixteen years of raging against the magic hemming in his mind, and his mother peels it away like it was never there. The warm, awful weight lifts off of his consciousness, leaving him gasping in awe at how light he feels.

She presses a bag into his hand, and he can barely hear her explanation of how it’s time he set out on his own. He’s a boat in the middle of a stormy sea, unmoored and unanchored, his mind screaming out for—he doesn’t even  _ know  _ what, he’s only been screaming for freedom, all this time, and now he has it.

_ How could you  _ **_do_ ** _ this to me,  _ **_why_ ** _ did you do this to me, I was a  _ **_child,_ ** _ I  _ **_am_ ** _ a child, HOW COULD YOU? _

But he can’t say it. Can’t say any of it. He finally has the freedom to speak, and all the words are trapped on his tongue.

“Go on then,” his mother says, putting her hand on his shoulder. “Go and help.”

***

Visenna sighs as she watches her Buttercup walk into the forest. It’s always difficult, letting her little birds fly from the nest. But he will do great things for the world, she knows. She has raised him well.

***

Buttercup spends a whole day just walking, staring blindly at the ground beneath his feet. He’s free. He’s  _ free,  _ finally. He has the thing he’s prayed for all his life. So then why does he feel so awful, so aimless and trapped and terrified?

When the dusk starts to gather in the air around him, whatever energy has kept him going seems to fly from him all at once. He falls to his knees, barely feeling the pain of the rocks and sticks digging into his skin. Pressure is building again, in his chest and throat and eyes, and Visenna isn’t here to hold it back this time. No one is here. He’s alone, for the first time in his life.

He wraps his arms around his stomach and the pressure explodes out of him, a loud and ragged scream that cuts through the quiet of the woods like a sword through skin. He startles, shocked that such a loud sound could come from him, that his lungs have the capacity for this much pain. He sounds like a soldier with a leg torn off, or a woman in the midst of labor. He doesn’t sound like himself.

But he does.

He does.

He does.

He screams again. Again.  _ Againandagainandagain  _ until he’s sure the woods will echo with it for years to come. 

His eyes blur, and he brings his hand up to his face to find tears slipping down his cheeks. He’s crying. He’s  _ crying.  _ A distress signal, a call for help, a plea for comfort that he’s never been able to make. And now, now that he can finally profess how much pain he’s in, now that he can let it pour from him like water from a split dam, there’s no one around to help.

He curls up on his side, buries his face in a pile of uncaring pine needles, and wails like the child he never got to be.


End file.
